Prof. Dr. med. Christian Kratz was born in Neuss near Düsseldorf. He studied Human medicine in Bochum, Düsseldorf and Johannesburg. He trained as a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. In 1999, he received a scholarship from the Mildred Scheel Foundation to carry out a two-year research project on leukemia at the University of California in San Francisco.
Prof. Kratz received his training as a pediatric oncologist at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg, where he habilitated and was appointed senior physician. This was followed by positions in Wellington, New Zealand and at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. In 2012, he was appointed to the W3 professorship for Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the MHH. His research focuses on the causes of cancer in children.